"It's only two weeks" was ITV's stiff upper lip approach as the London 2012 Olympics opened on 27 July. The broadcaster has duly trotted out a low-cost summer schedule of soap and detective drama repeats, from Vera to Poirot and Midsomer Murders – and been totally thrashed.

With massive audiences flocking to the BBC's coverage, from the 27 million peak for the opening ceremony onwards – and the public catching results on their smartphone or online –it made absolute sense for the BBC to have sealed its exclusive rights contract for the Olympics up to 2020 just before the London Games opened.

However, London 2012 didn't have to be such a BBC fest. One cannot help wonder if "the people's channel" would love to turn back the clock.

ITV covered the Olympics in 1968, 1972, 1980 and 1988, and for several decades strove to reach a fair accommodation to share coverage with the BBC, before bowing out after the Seoul Games.

In 1988 ITV co-operated in covering the Seoul Olympics with Channel 4, which provided overnight and breakfast coverage. This solved another key ITV problem before the onset of multichannel television: the BBC had two channels (BBC1 and BBC2) to screen coverage; ITV had only one.

The official history of independent television in Britaincharts the disjointed story of ITV's Olympics coverage. The Olympics was named as one of the list of non-exclusive sporting events back in 1956, when ITV first went on air, and the regional companies made it a special network event.

ITV made strenuous efforts to muscle its way into sharing top sporting rights. But this led to fierce rivalry with the BBC, which has covered the Olympics unbroken since 1960, and was proud of technical advances, including coverage in colour on BBC2 for the first time from the Mexico City Games in 1968.

Throughout the 1970s there was a constant negotiation over avoiding duplication of Olympic events, and alternating coverage to save money. But they failed to agree on sharing coverage for the Olympics in 1972, 1976 and 1980, and the football World Cup finals in 1974 and 1978.

In practice the 1972 the Munich Olympics was covered by ITV principally through extended ITN news bulletins. In 1976 ITV abandoned its plans for the Montreal Games, after the IBA – then the commercial TV regulator – asked the BBC governors for a form of alternation in coverage, only for the BBC management to speak of "total war".

But ITV's decision not to cover the Los Angeles Games in 1984 was key to the decision to withdraw from the Olympics altogether. It was about cost and commercial returns. The official history of ITV records "extraordinary demands made for working overseas" from heavily unionised technicians. Camera crews travelled first class, received daily allowances, expected first class hotels – a disincentive on ITV companies to authorise any shooting overseas.

So in 1984 all ITV coverage of the Olympics was cancelled, rather than take an extra production assistant to Los Angeles and create an expensive precedent. An accompanying table in the book shows that after a strike in 1979 average annual earnings for ITV employees jumped 73% in 1980. So the Olympics became a BBC-only event.

Freed of commercial breaks, viewers would probably say that's a jolly good outcome.